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	STEP 4 - Contents > Examples of heritage values > Who assesses heritage significance? > Assessing the significance of a place > What is a statement of significance? > Examples of statements of significance   > Have a go - Step 4
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	Expressing and communicating significance in other ways The significance of a place can also be expressed in creative ways, such as using video, songs, displays or artworks, as well as a written statement. This can be a very powerful way of communicating to others how important a place is. Here Shirley Swindley holds her painting which depicts the significant values of a woman's fertility place sacred to Ku Ku Yalangi elders.   . Two views of Gulaga The following two 'statements' are about the same place - Gulaga, or Mt Dromedary, on the NSW south coast. The first - Gulaga, the Mother - was submitted by Seph Scorzazie as a written entry in the Australian Heritage Commission's creative writing competition - Heritage Rave. It won a Special Merit award. The words convey a very personal view of why Gulaga is worth protecting. The second 'statement' is part of the narration of the winning professional video in the Commission's video competition - Heritage in Focus. It was submitted by David Arvind Condon and Hiromi Matsuoka. The words are spoken by two Yuin elders.   1. Gulaga, The Mother The Great Woman Gulaga lies beside me with her children muddling in the folds of her skirt and I see her young son who is called back after he left home for the sea. That's Montague Island just off the coast. The myth tells how he is joined to his mother through an umbilicus that runs under the ocean to her innerness. Dolphins are said to swim that tunnel that connects that great woman to her son. The legend is that she is the site where the world began. One of the local Aboriginal women at Wallaga Lake on the far south coast of New South Wales says, "Gulaga is a sacred mountain because the Creative Beings were there in the past and because they are there still. To engage with the mountain is to engage with spirit". Her clarity on sacredness is this: "Sacred events are events authorised by the Creative Beings and engaged in by human beings as a way of sustaining spirit in human life…". My deep wish is for Gulaga to remain undamaged by human habitation. That amongst all these changes going on in all our lives she remains unchanging and stable. And yet forever changing that fabulous auric garb. Oh those divine gossamer pearl shell numbers - so elegant. In my early morning run around the waking village I come over the crest of the hill and there she is, directly ahead of me, and I'm running with my daughter towards her. I feel an invisible bolt of energy in my solar plexus as her hugeness enters and fills all of my visual perception. I am breathing hard, my daughter has gone ahead of me. It's 6.30am, the day has begun and I've been blessed by her presence again.   2. Gulaga (excerpt from video narration by David Arvind Condon and Hiromi Matsuoka) Max Harrison, Yuin Elder 'At the beginning, before Dharama the Great Spirit created Tunku and Naadi there was only oneness. Ann Thomas, Yuin Elder 'Our Creation Story on the south coast of Tunku and Naadi coming down from the stars - they came from the stars to this beautiful land. They became this earth, they became part of the stones, the rocks, the clay. They became part of the trees and the mountains themselves...and the oceans. And they developed from the earth…and all our energies and everything else that we are is in those rocks at Gulaga and every other teaching place. And so we became part of the earth. We never profess to own the land, but the land owns us. Max: 'Dharama the Great Spirit, He created everything. Dharama is Creation itself. Ann 'Tunku and Naadi came to this land. There was no-one living here, but there was the environment; there were the fish and the whales, the birds, the animals - they gave them all names. Max 'The culture is in the trees, in the bush, in the waters, in the animals, the birds. All this oneness, all this Creation around us. 'Mother Earth, Father Sky, Grandmother Moon and Grandfather Sun. That is so important. Dharama's Creation is all our relations. Ann 'Tunku and Naadi were looking at the land, looking at the environment, looking at the fish, looking at everything and renaming them. The Aboriginal people believe that they are co-creators, so this is the creation of most things that were happening and developing. Max 'What we have to do is go back to the One Time, of how it was…and bring that culture back the way it was. It's the Lore we're bringing back here: respect. Respect of the Mother Earth: respect to the trees, to the rocks, to the waters - to all sacred and significant sites that we have. That's the power of this place, to really bring you back. .....